CHAPTER XXVI. HOW TO GILD.

When you want to gild you take the purest, cleanest, 24 carat gold, & you beat it out with clean hammers on an anvil, until you get it to the thinness of a sheet of writing paper. Then you cut up as much as you want into small pieces. After this you take a new crucible never yet used & such as goldsmiths melt silver and gold in, and into it you put so much quicksilver, free from all impurities, as may be needed for the gold you want to employ. The proportion is at the rate of one ounce to a scudi’s weight, that is to say, one part of gold to eight parts of quicksilver, rather less than more of the latter. Note that you should first mix together the quicksilver and the gold in a clean vessel of earth or wood, and you put the crucible on a fire of glowing embers, but not using the bellows. When the crucible is red you throw into it some of the mixed quicksilver and gold, hold it over the fire, and with a glowing ember gripped in a pair of tongs stir it thoroughly together. Your eye & the feel of your hand will tell you whether the gold be dissolved and united with the quicksilver. Great care has to be taken to aid the solution by rapid stirring, for if you hold it too long, the gold, or rather the amalgam will get too thick; if, on the other hand, you hold it on too short a time, it will be too thin, and the gold not well mixed. The great care which this requires can only be got by practice. When it is all mixed & dissolved, & everything done in the manner described, you take the hot mixture & pour it into a little beaker or vase in accord with the amount of the gold you have mixed, and this vase is filled with water, so that you hear it hissing when you pour the mixture in. Then you wash it thus two or three times in other clean water, till finally your water is quite clean and pure, and then you set about the actual gilding as follows.

Wherever you want to gild on your work you have to get it well polished & scratch-brushed,[174]for so it is called in the craft. These scratch-brushes are made of brass wire about as thick as thread[175]& done up into bundles about as thick as a man’s finger, more or less, in accordance with the size of the work you want to scrub, & tied round with brass or copper wire. Of course you can buy these brushes at a grocer’s, but there they are usually sold only of one size; so that your skilled workman if he wants to do his work well, and has a large piece to do, binds up his own brushes himself according to the size he wants.

After the scrubbing, you put the amalgam on with anavvivatoio,[176]for so we call the little rod of copper set in a wooden handle, & much the same size and length as a table fork; here, again, the size accords with the requirements of your work. Carefully then do you proceed to spread the amalgam over the places you want to gild. True it is that some have put quicksilver on first, and then spread the amalgam after, but this is not a good method, for too much mercury dulls the colour and the beauty of the gold. Others, again, have thought to do better by putting the gold on in successive times. This I have likewise seen done, but have come to the conclusion that the best way is to put all the gold on at once that you want for your gilding, and then heat it over a slow fire, till all the quicksilver goes off in fumes. If you notice that the gold on your work is not even, you can, while it is still warm, very easily add on as much as may make it so, till all is covered with gold. Then let it cool by itself. I forgot to say in its proper place that if the gold won’t stick on you will do well to have a little of the whitening water[177]of which I told you above, and you dip youravvivatoiowith the gold in this water, & if that still won’t help you, take a little aquafortis evaporated and weakened, and there’s no doubt that will do it.

FOOTNOTES:[174]Grattapugiata.[175]Refe di cucire.[176]See ‘Vita,’ p. 252.[177]Bianchimento.

[174]Grattapugiata.

[175]Refe di cucire.

[176]See ‘Vita,’ p. 252.

[177]Bianchimento.

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